Review of Barshasketh’s Forthcoming Second Album on Todestrieb

Leave the Hall have posted a review for Barshasketh’s forthcoming second album Sitra Achra. Comparisons are already being drawn with Peste Noire, Wolves in the Throne Room, and Agalloch.

Opening with the full on Mercyful Fate atmospherics, it becomes immediately apparent that Barshasketh’s musical ability far outweighs that of your average corpse-painted tremolo pickers. Through the Burzum-esque low fi knifed speaker cone fuzz cuts a clinically clean tone you would never expect. Malaise’s individual elements might be about as trad-black as you can get but the intensity & otherworldly riffing serves as more as tribute to Hellhammer’s unbeatable formula than the desperate rakings of a band with nothing in their music testes. The technicality & composition however, along with the truly bleak aura they generate, sets them apart from others in the genre…L’Ange Du Meridien’s initial intensity segues beautifully into Alcestian territory with haunting clean leads layered over frantic guitar work. Things end on the amazing Schlußstück, proving that they can slow things down to blackened doom tempos with Agallochian passages alternated carefully with break-neck riffing. Inevitable comparisons will be drawn to the likes of WITTR, Peste Noire & Krallice but Barshasketh refused to let myopic fanboyism distract them from their goal of breeding something dark & raw yet technically competent & progressive…Sitra Achra is an intelligent, mature entry into a swamped genre. Stick a “Fenriz approved” sticker on this, it’ll be on Band of the Week any day now.